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Mountain Man's Global News Archive
Are the Sciences
reducible to Physics?
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Are the Sciences reducible to Physics? |
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Date: 19 April 1998 21:02:18 GMT
From: Michael Weiss, Agustín Sánchez
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Are the sciences reducible to physics?
Most assuredly a remnant of the nineteenth century
scientific successes within the realms of mechanisation,
predictive prowess, and the general development of
scientific knowledge, it was often taught that if all
the sciences were as The Tree of Knowledge, then
the discipline of Physics would surely be its trunk.
Associated with this concept, and persistent in various
flavours of scientific philosophy, was the reductionist
assertion that biology is reducible to chemistry, and
chemistry to physics - that all is thus reducible to physics.
The following responses comment upon this:
Michael Weiss wrote:
Well, here is a quote from an article by Howard Georgi, whose is best
known for his work in theoretical particle physics, one of the
more `fundamental' fields:
Biology is not a branch of physics.
...the statement, "chemistry and biology are branches of physics"
is not true. It *is* true that in chemistry and biology one does
not encounter any new physical principles. But the systems on
which the old principles act differ in such a drastic and
qualitative way in the different fields that it is simply not
*useful* to regard one as a branch of another. Indeed, the
systems are so different that `principles' of new kinds must be
developed, and it is the principles which are inherently chemical
or biological which are important.
--Howard Georgi, "Effective quantum field theories", in _The New
Physics_, ed. Paul Davies
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"Agustín Sánchez" wrote:
A drunk was looking and looking at the floor, under
a streetlight. Another man asked him: "What are you doing?"
"I lost my key, and I try to find it, ... hip!"
The man try to help: "Did you lose it here?
"No, it was there, but here is more enlightened."
Your asking is a great question within the Philosophy of Science (the Theory
of Knowledge). It is called Reductionism versus Holism. Reductionists
believes that all phenomena in the universe can be described in terms of
physical laws (why not in terms of mathematical equations?). Holists argues
that each level of complexity in the matter has some own laws that can not be
reduced to a "deeper" level. Holism do not deny the need of trying to do i:.
The true progress in natural sciences comes from searching, as far as
possible, explanations to the phenomena based in the "lower level" science.
So, biology became a modern science when the biologists begun to spoke about
organic chemistry. Chemistry became a modern science when chemists were able
to find the physical laws of the chemical reaction. So reductionism is good.
But it is no so easy. Give Biology as an example: Of course, life, (or
thought), consists in some chemical compounds and reactions, that can
described, at last, by physical laws. But Biology and Psychology have some
inner questions, problems, and methods, that can not be reduced to physics.
Just think about this: Physics only solves with some degree of exactness the
problem of two interacting bodies, if they can be viewed as points! How dare
physicists to describe all phenomena in the world? Physics only can search
under the light of its candle. But there is a lot of things over there, in
the dark.
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